Approximately 20% of adult cancer patients are eligible to participate in a clinical trial, but only 2.5-9% do so. Accrual is even less for minority and medically underserved populations. As a result, critical life-saving treatments and quality of life services developed from research studies may not address their needs. This study questions the utility of the bioethical concern with therapeutic misconception (TM), a misconception that occurs when research subjects fail to distinguish between clinical research and ordinary treatment, and therefore attribute (...) therapeutic intent to research procedures in the safety net setting. This paper provides ethnographic insight into the ways in which research is discussed and related to standard treatment. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have been remaking the landscape in political theory, and in this important book some of the most important feminist political theorists provide reconstructions of those concepts most central to the tradition of political philosophy. The goal is nothing less than the construction of a blueprint for a positive feminist theory.Many of these papers are completely new; others are extensions of important earlier work; two are reprints of classic papers. The result is a progress report on the continuing feminist (...) project to re-envision traditional political theory. As such, it constitutes essential reading not only for feminist thinkers but also for traditional philosophers and political theorists, who will need to come to terms with these contemporary critiques and re-readings. (shrink)

Recourse to a being’s moral status is the ‘nuclear option’ of moral theorising—it tells us not only what obligations we have and to what degree, but whether we have obligations to them in the first place and whether their moral concern trumps concern for other beings simply in virtue of the kind of being they are. As such, we should only explain obligations in terms of a being’s moral status if doing so is principled and necessary to defend that obligation. (...) In ‘Pregnancy and Superior Moral Status: A Proposal for Two Thresholds of Personhood’, Robinson1 argues that pregnant women achieve a second and therefore superior threshold of moral status to ‘mere persons’. She insists that this is not a view about the woman and the fetus together but that ‘the pregnant woman herself is more than one individual’. This gives us strong reason to re-balance the imbalanced burdens experienced by women due to pregnancy. I will argue her proposal is neither principled nor necessary. We can explain special obligations to pregnant women without appealing to a distinct moral status, without reaching for the ‘nuclear option’. First, consider Robinson’s1 claim that pregnant women ‘are performing a role which is of supreme importance: that of creating new human life, and maintaining the survival of the human species’. …. (shrink)

Ault, Nancy J Spiritual direction is at risk in a society which is turning increasingly to personal feelings to validate experience and justify decision making. An appeal to feelings and emotions enables marketers to sell religion and spirituality as consumer products. As a product among many, the wider contexts of religion and spirituality may fade from consciousness and be lost. In such a 'pick and mix' culture, as well as losing sight of the embodied nature of understanding, what may (...) happen is a slow drifting apart of thinking, feelings and action. The cost of such a separation is high. Feelings may disintegrate into sentimentalism, thinking sink into legalism and action become uninformed reaction. Hence, practices which facilitate the intentional integration of mind, heart and behaviour can provide an essential counterbalance to the contemporary forces engendering separation. (shrink)

How do novel scientific concepts arise? In Creating Scientific Concepts, Nancy Nersessian seeks to answer this central but virtually unasked question in the problem of conceptual change. She argues that the popular image of novel concepts and profound insight bursting forth in a blinding flash of inspiration is mistaken. Instead, novel concepts are shown to arise out of the interplay of three factors: an attempt to solve specific problems; the use of conceptual, analytical, and material resources provided by the (...) cognitive-social-cultural context of the problem; and dynamic processes of reasoning that extend ordinary cognition. Focusing on the third factor, Nersessian draws on cognitive science research and historical accounts of scientific practices to show how scientific and ordinary cognition lie on a continuum, and how problem-solving practices in one illuminate practices in the other. (shrink)

There is substantial evidence that traditional instructional methods have not been successful in helping students to restructure their commonsense conceptions and learn the conceptual structures of scientific theories. This paper argues that the nature of the changes and the kinds of reasoning required in a major conceptual restructuring of a representation of a domain are fundamentally the same in the discovery and in the learning processes. Understanding conceptual change as it occurs in science and in learning science will require the (...) development of a common cognitive model of conceptual change. The historical construction of an inertial representation of motion is examined and the potential instructional implications of the case are explored. (shrink)

A theoretical approach relying on quantum computation in microtubules within neurons can potentially resolve the enigmatic features of visual consciousness, but raises other questions. For example, how can delicate quantum states, which in the technological realm demand extreme cold and isolation to avoid environmental ‘decoherence’, manage to survive in the warm, wet brain? And if such states could survive within neuronal cell interiors, how could quantum states grow to encompass the whole brain? We present a physiological model for visual consciousness (...) that can accommodate brain-wide quantum computation according to the Penrose–Hameroff ‘Orch OR’ model. In this view, visual consciousness occurs as a series of several-hundred-millisecond epochs, each comprising ‘crescendo sequences’ of quantum computations occurring at ∼40 Hz. (shrink)

Scientists, either working alone or in groups, require rich cognitive, social, cultural, and material environments to accomplish their epistemic aims. There is research in the cognitive sciences that examines intelligent behavior as a function of the environment (“environmental perspectives”), which can be used to examine how scientists integrate “cognitive-cultural” resources as they create environments for problem-solving. In this paper, I advance the position that an expanded framework of distributed cognition can provide conceptual, analytical, and methodological tools to investigate how scientists (...) enhance natural cognitive capacities by creating specific kinds of environments to address their epistemic goals. In a case study of a pioneering neuroengineering lab seeking to understand learning in living networks of neurons, I examine how the researchers integrated conceptual, methodological, and material resources from engineering, neuroscience, and computational science to create different kinds of distributed problem-solving environments that enhanced their natural cognitive capacities, for instance, for reasoning, visualization, abstraction, imagination, and memory, to attain their epistemic aims. (shrink)

The origins of the ‘ incommensurability problem’ and its central aspect, the ‘ meaning variance thesis’ are traced to the successive collapse of several distinctions maintained by the standard empiricist account of meaning in scientific theories. The crucial distinction is that between a conceptual structure and a theory. The ‘thesis’ and the ‘problem’ follow from critiques of this distinction by Duhem, Quine and Feyerabend. It is maintained that, rather than revealing the ‘problem’, the arguments leading to it simply show the (...) inadequacy of the reductionist theory of meaning. The genuine remaining problem is that of the development of a new theory of meaning in science. (shrink)

Building computational models of engineered exemplars, or prototypes, is a common practice in the bioengineering sciences. Computational models in this domain are often built in a patchwork fashion, drawing on data and bits of theory from many different domains, and in tandem with actual physical models, as the key objective is to engineer these prototypes of natural phenomena. Interestingly, such patchy model building, often combined with visualizations, whose format is open to a wide range of choice, leads to the discovery (...) of new concepts and control structures. Two key questions are raised by this practice: how could discoveries arise from building external representations for which there is wide latitude in choice of the components from which they are built, and thus can be considered significantly arbitrary, and how could such discoveries allow engineering a real-world prototype system. To examine these questions, we present two case studies of discoveries that emerged from the building of such computational models in the bioengineering sciences. We then develop a process model that accounts for the discovery and transfer problems raised by both these cases, focusing on the process of building the model. Specifically, to account for the discovery problem, we propose that the process of building such models gradually leads to a close coupling between the modeler’s internal processes and the external dynamic model. To account for the transfer problem, we propose that the process of building the model leads to the creation of an enactive model that is generic, which closely enacts, and thus reveals, the way the system-level behavior of the engineered prototype emerges in time through the interaction of its parts. This enactive replication process leads to the model and the prototype forming a new class, which allows concepts and control structures developed for the computational model to be transfered to the real-world prototype. We argue that this account requires rethinking correspondence in engineering sciences as a plastic and enactive relation. A closer focus on the process of building models is required to develop a general account of this emerging approach to discovery. (shrink)

In his article, "Is Essentialism Unscientific?" (1988), Jarrett Leplin claims that I do not have sufficient grounds for rejecting the customary "philosophical method of discovery" that allows for the direct transfer of theories developed in the philosophy of language to science. While admitting that all attempts at transfer thus far have failed, he still maintains that method is sound. I argue that the wholesale failure of these attempts is reason enough to suspect the method and to try to devise one (...) more suitable to fathoming how "meaning", "reference", and "meaning change" are to be understood for scientific theories. The method I have proposed in Nersessian (1984b), and subsequent work, demands that we learn how to incorporate the actual practices of meaning construction in science into our analyses. Leplin distorts my analysis and, thus, fails to understand the insights that study provides. (shrink)

This concluding essay offers reflections on core components of the faculty fellowship program, its outcomes and results, and program design and administration. Amid the current calls for reform in legal and other professional education, the lessons we learned and perspectives we gained during this fellowship program may be relevant to any faculty members and university administrations that are seeking to create more effective and engaged professional and graduate school programs, whatever may be their subject-matter discipline.

Much of the attention of philosophy of science, history of science, and psychology in the twentieth century has focused on the nature of conceptual change. Conceptual change in science has occupied pride of place in these disciplines, as either the subject of inquiry or the source of ideas about the nature of conceptual change in other domains. There have been numerous conceptual changes in the history of science, some more radical than others. One of the most radical was the chemical (...) revolution. In the seventeenth century, chemists believed that the processes of combustion and calcination involved the absorption or release of a substance called phlogiston. On this theory, when an ore is heated with charcoal, it absorbs phlogiston to produce a metal; when a metal is burned, it releases phlogiston and leaves behind a residue, or calx. The concept of phlogiston derived from a quite complex Aristotelian/medieval structure that included three concepts central to chemical theory: sulphur, the principle of inflammability; mercury, the principle of fluidity; and salt, the principle of inertness. All material substances were believed to contain these three principles in the form of earths. The phlogiston theory held that in combustion, the sulphurous earth (phlogiston) returns to the substance from which it escaped during some earlier burning process in its history, and that in calcination the process is reversed. However, chemists also knew that a calx is heavier than the metal from which it was derived. So, the theory implies that phlogiston has a negative weight, or a positive lightness. This did not present a problem, though, because it was compatible with the Aristotelian elements of fire and air (the others being earth and water), which were not attracted towards the center of the earth. The development of the oxygen theory of combustion and calcination by Lavoisier in the late eighteenth century has been called the chemical revolution because it required replacing the whole conceptual structure with, for example, different concepts of substance and element and new concepts of oxygen and caloric. In the new system, it was no longer possible to believe in the existence of substances with negative weight. According to the oxygen theory, oxygen gas is released in combustion and absorbed in calcination. Thus calx is metal (substance) plus oxygen, rather than metal minus phlogiston. The concept of phlogiston was eliminated from the chemical lexicon. The reconceptualization of chemical phenomena that took place in the chemical revolution made possible the atomic theory of matter, which, as we know, posits quite different constituents of material substances from the principles central to the earlier conceptual structure. Just what constitutes conceptual change, how it relates to theory change, and how it relates to changes in belief continues to be a subject of much debate. Clearly, though, as the preceding example demonstrates, the three are significantly interrelated. (shrink)

In this commentary, arguments are made for a dendritic code being preferable to a temporal synaptic code as a model of conscious experience. A temporal firing pattern is a product of an ongoing neural computation; hence, it is based on a neural algorithm and an algorithm may not provide the most suitable model for conscious experience. Reiteration of a temporal firing code as suggested in a preceding article (Helekar, 1999) does not necessarily improve the situation. The alternative model presented here (...) is that certain synaptic activity patterns, possibly those possessing universal features as suggested by Helekar, can become encoded in the dendritic structure. Following dendritic encoding, quantum phenomena in those specific dendrite sets could illuminate the static image of that encoded synaptic activity. It is the activation of the static image that would be equivalent to conscious experience; thus, conscious awareness would not be directly affiliated with synaptic activity. This dendrite encoding model may go farther than other models to explain the gestalt nature of consciousness, insofar as quantum entanglement could produce an interconnectedness between specific sets of dendrites-an interconnectedness that need not be based on neural computation or neural connections. (shrink)

Trust in the nurse—patient relationship is maintained not by how professionals perceive their actions but rather by how the public perceives them. However, little is known about the public's view of nurses and other health care professionals who participate in pharmaceutical marketing. Our study describes public perceptions of health care providers' role in pharmaceutical marketing and compares their responses with those of a random sample of licensed family nurse practitioners. The family nurse practitioners perceived their participation in marketing activities as (...) significantly more ethically appropriate than did the public responders. Further research is warranted before conclusions can be drawn, but these early findings suggest that nurse practitioners should consider a conservative approach to participating in pharmaceutical marketing. (shrink)

Charlemagne's monogram -- Introduction -- The problem of consciousness -- The earliest vision -- Truth, being, and mind -- The Kehre -- The essence of truth -- The later Heidegger -- Reading Heidegger after Heidegger -- Being not a soul but the unmediated discovery of being.

Thought experiments have played a prominent role in numerous cases of conceptual change in science. I propose that research in cognitive psychology into the role of mental modeling in narrative comprehension can illuminate how and why thought experiments work. In thought experimenting a scientist constructs and manipulates a mental simulation of the experimental situation. During this process, she makes use of inferencing mechanisms, existing representations, and general world knowledge to make realistic transformations from one possible physical state to the next. (...) The simulation reveals the impossibility of integrating multiple constraints drawn from existing representations and the world and pinpoints the locus of the required conceptual reform. (shrink)

Cases where analogy has played a significant role in the formation of a new scientific concept are well-documented. Yet, how is it that genuinely new representations can be constructed from existing representations? It is argued that the process of ‘generic modeling’ enables abstraction of features common to both the domain of the source of the analogy and of the target phenomena. The analysis focuses on James Clerk Maxwell's construction of the electromagnetic field concept. The mathematical representation Maxwell constructed turned out (...) to be a system of abstract laws that when applied to electromagnetic systems yield laws of a dynamical system that will not map back onto the mechanicals domains used in their construction. (shrink)

This article argues that an apocalyptic interpretation of divine revelation provides the theological foundation for discerning the appropriate space for human life to thrive. This apocalyptic theological ethic is contrasted with that of end-time Christians who have supported Donald Trump as God’s chosen one and who joined the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. It contrasts five features of apocalyptic thinking for both groups: (1) expectation of the end of the world, (2) ethics, (3) Christ, nation, and (...) the first commandment (4) Christians and Jews, and (5) the cross. While the article seeks to give a fair description of the beliefs of end-time Christians, it argues that their beliefs have taken a heretical and dangerous turn. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published at the beginning of what has come to be known as “the cognitive revolution.” With hindsight one can construct significant parallels between the problems of knowledge, perception, and learning with which Kuhn and cognitive scientists were grappling and between the accounts developed by each. However, by and large Kuhn never utilized the research in cognitive science—especially in cognitive psychology—that we believe would have furthered his own paradigm. This is puzzling since he (...) did not have the traditional philosophical aversion to “psychologizing” and in fact drew on insights from psychology to support the most radical claims in Structure, such as the “Gestalt switch” nature of conceptual change. Indeed, the research program outlined there seems intrinsically historical, philosophical, and psychological and Kuhn's work has had considerable influence on research in cognitive science. (shrink)

We lay groundwork for applying ethnographic methods in philosophy of science. We frame our analysis in terms of two tasks: to identify the benefits of an ethnographic approach in philosophy of science and to structure an ethnographic approach for philosophical investigation best adapted to provide information relevant to philosophical interests and epistemic values. To this end, we advocate for a purpose-guided form of cognitive ethnography that mediates between the explanatory and normative interests of philosophy of science, while maintaining openness and (...) independence when framing such an investigation to achieve robust unbiased results. (shrink)

The claims of the epistemological 'anarchists' have their roots in the orthodox tradition as well as in the Popperian. In particular they follow from the work of Quine. Meaning variance and incommensurability follow directly from the holistic conception of meaning in his 'network' view. Quine's efforts to evade this conclusion fail. His attempt to develop a theory-neutral notion of observation sentence is shown (1) to be inconsistent with his previous claims since it involves the tacit acceptance of the 'dogma of (...) reductionism', (2) to involve the acceptance of a questionable 'third dogma', i.e. the stimulus-response theory of behaviorist psychology, and (3) ultimately to miss the point of the anarchists. In Quinian terms, in order for observation sentences to perform the function of intertheoretical 'arbiters', what is needed is 'similarity of assent', which is not a meaningful notion on an internetwork basis. (shrink)

The paper argues that the practice of thought experintenting enables scientists to follow through the implications of a way of representing nature by simulating an exemplary or representative situation that is feasible within that representation. What distinguishes thought experimenting from logical argument and other forms of propositional reasoning is that reasoning by means of a thought experiment involves constructing and simulating a mental model of a representative situation. Although thought experimenting is a creative part of scientific practice, it is a (...) highly refined extension of a mundane form of reasoning. It is not a mystery why scientific thought experiments are a reliable source of empirical insights. Thought experimenting uses and manipulates representations that derive from real-world experiences and our conceptualizations of them. (shrink)

PARTI The Philosophical Situation: A Critical Appraisal We must begin with the mistake and find out the truth in it. That is, we must uncover the source of ...